Perspectivism

This is a developed reflection on a reply I have given on Fulcrum (if they show it) to Steve Griffin's response to the earlier entry in this blog.

Fulcrum is an Open Evangelical forum, and Steve Griffin is one of these there who is questioning some fundamentals about Anglicanism from his Protestant point of view. It produces some overlaps with my position, which I come at from the liberal perspective that I have worked at across different institutions. His own explanation shows that he is moving from an Anglican to a more Presbyterian position, and maybe less conservative in his evangelical theology as he gets pre-Constantinian.

He is saying that my Anglican position is one of perspectivism in principle (I assume meaning that it is not doctrinal or communal in principle). I took a while to think about this, and then basically agreed with him. I am making an individual response to the institution and what it does.

I say that I am trying to do, as a liberal, is ask how well and these institutions do, and if what they do works. In other words, as individuals we choose between institutions and, of course, they form us. Very sociological, of course.

One aspect of this is me leaving the Unitarians. The Unitarian movement is now such a muddle. One reason I gave it up was because too often congregationalism contradict a position of individual choice in belief and expression, by maintaining one faith expression as dominant and legitimate. That was made worse by the Object, and then some suggesting it be an invocation in worship, producing a postliberal institution somewhat less resourced than other institutions.

Then I have a position that even if I was in agreement with that postliberal outcome (but what a waste of an institution that could be otherwise), it would not meet my own theology/ anthropology of eucharistic practice and identifying with what it means in terms of continuity, releasing the past into the present, and exchange.

(I've actually not discussed the concept of releasing the past into the present as clearly as that headlining, and perhaps I ought to give this additional thought. I have a view about Christianity as continuous with its diverse origins, but this is further about memorial and releasing into the present - it relates to real presence and real absence.)

Eucharistic practice is divisive within the Unitarians, and I proved that locally when I took such a service, and I regretfully consider that other communing methods are inadequate compared with eating and drinking, and thus avoiding theologies of the consuming and changing body. The flower communion is a poor substitute, in my view: a practice that has spread with an absence of its potential theology, as indeed theology becomes increasingly difficult in a breadth rather than depth movement.

Steve Griffin is moving his foundations as regards ministry, and I am not rigid about ministry. Thus I have a difficulty regarding the Independent Sacramental Movement. I don't care about the size of groups, but I do worry about magical, superstitutious and supernatural views about apostolic succession, although I can justify this on recognition reasons. I'm probably a bit stronger than just recognition, that there is again something in the person and the body (a fusion of body into body into body into body) in the means of eucharistic distribution. Such views are still consistent even with lay presidency, though needs recognition by the second body.

(Body of Christ into body of Church into body of President into body of Christ sign)

Then there is the matter of theology and communion, and specifically rowan Williams and Andrew Goddard being "open" in appreciation about it. Anyone reading this blog or the website will know that I actually like aspects of Rowan Williams's theology. It is narrative theology, and story. It is why he likes Philip Pullman. Where I criticise is that the nuanced detail back and forth starts to look like something more orthodox than sustainable via the bigger overview. It is not doctrine as grounded in the once divine hit into realist history, though he may regard history as story too. Added to this is Williams's view on Catholic inheritance and structures as a means of conducting theology. This is surely Roman Catholic in implication (without the all important added on bits). The Independent Sacramental Movement shows how this Catholic stance (without Roman added on bits) can involve change whilst obeying the methodology in Catholicism. Thus I agree with Steve Griffin about Andrew Goddard's over appreciation of Rowan Williams. In the end the Open Evangelical position (of Andrew Goddard) is just a notch somewhere else on the same post and consistent with the Conservative Evangelical organising a fellowship based on doctrine. The Catholic position is different: a version of baptised people organised into an ecclesia - a form of ministry.

I am a liberal through and through, and trying to work through how this relates to such an institution as the Anglican. Thus there are points of agreement with evangelicals and with Catholics. My needle points slightly to the Catholic side, but the Reformed in me is another reason for parking in the Anglican Church.

However, in these pluralistic and postmodern times, an institution that stretches too far is likely to get reorganised into specialisms. It is new reformation with added knobs on. Anglicanism is full of increasingly unsustainable incompatibilities, and is at breaking point across flatly contradictory attitudes. The danger for it is that as it removes the first set of incompatibilities, and likely splits into two, at least the more doctrinal and activist (for the split) side will divide again - and then again. Fulcrum cannot get away with this by accepting a shaving off of an edge or two to keep the rest, because that becomes a compromise with those who have pushed for a split and once the first shaving has gone, then comes a demand for a repeat performance. Eventually the unacceptable shaved off become the once accepted shaved off.

(There is almost a mathematical approach to this: that the strength of view for removal increases as each shave goes off: the affected and the lost edges being the least in favour of splitting and schisming.)

In contrast, my argument for a Communion has been to stop either Protestant or Catholic centralisation (doctrine or communion) and to scrap the Covenant. In other words, keep these preferences and specialities close to home, and associate only loosely beyond them, or leave it to national churches to decide with whom to associate or not. You don't solve a problem by adding to the cause: over over identification between incompatibilities due to increased centralisation - that just leads to a bigger explosion in order to release the incompatibilities screwed in to each other.

Incidentally, whilst I might favour a free thinking liturgical movement in the James Martineau sense (plus eucharistic continuity), it really is too much to accuse The Episcopal Church (TEC) of effectively doing the same, or perhaps implying that it is committed to an ideological Unitarianism it simply does not express or what most Episcopalians believe. This is the latest silly writing from Conservative Evangelicals. The placing of words unitarian and universalist close by is of course a deliberate tease, as in Unitarian Univeralist Association (UUA) - and then the differences between the UUA and TEC in theologies or as communities are considerable.

Liberalism, Postliberalism and Catholicism

Steve Griffin, who could be regarded as Open Evangelical, wrote this in one Fulcrum discussion page about the Catholic side of Anglicanism:

...the theology of revelation that I was taught in the Catholic seminary I attended in Canada was close to RW's: Word and the interpretation of it are dimensions of revelation. Here and there it looks orthodox and apostolic and 'safe' because it's patient, waits for the communion to agree before receiving new doctrine, etc., but it provides the framework for thoroughgoing revision. That's because as long as interpretation of the Word is an aspect of revelation we have virtually nothing outside tradition to which the tradition is accountable. In practice, communion wins out over confession, because truth is always so tentative and provisional that you can never challenge tradition as such. You can only wait patiently to see if this or that is 'received'.

Posted by: Steve Griffin Thursday 1 November 2007 - 09:34 pm

This is surely right, and it is why Catholicism becomes associated with liberalism and looks like it to some, and indeed it can ally with some liberalism (as these elements of the Anglican Broad Church did).

The point has been made to me elsewhere that Catholicism and liberalism are different: Catholicism, particularly as it moves East, is a kind of given matrix that has deep paradox built in, and that its revelation is in that deep paradox that opens itself to the apophatic. So it can also appear to be liberal from that depth perspective too, as well as from the appearance about change.

The choices are that the Catholicism (that can change) has its operating unity within the named Church or, for Rowan Williams, within the Anglican Communion - and, if the latter (a rather big "if"), a cross section of cultures and Churches across that Communion would slow down any form of innovation, either Western or African (or of any region). Obviously its Churches are more culturally uniform and so innovation is more likely consistent with the region.

Incidentally, with the Eastern tradition, the paradoxes are continuously examined and never sorted out: change is a Western feature of sorting out. In the West concepts are developed, examined, and altered: in the East they are not altered once a fixed point is arrived at. Potentially, though, they can be, but a depth dynamic is at work over a sorting out dynamic. It is not just Western Protestantism that is rationalistic.

Where liberalism is different from Western Catholicism, and even Catholicism's ability to change, is that it becomes, in the end, group based or even individualistic. The group, or set of individuals, or indeed just individuals, is the new Church because this is where sentient interpretation takes place. Why should it be limited to a particular kind of greater institution in a particular place? One reason, of course, is that there must be a theology or ecclesiology of the Church. Nevertheless such a Church can arrange to have variation within: but then there can be a Church that says the Church is potentially each few or each individual - and this is what it becomes.

In this sense, then, there is a breaking down of the Catholicism of the larger Church - because, just as there can be a tendency to centralise (Rowan Williams), there can also be a tendency to decentralise.

Then what?

Groups will operate with some collective symbols. There might be a consistent worship, say eucharistic, in order that "Catholic" has retained meaning (and it follows the long tradition of Christian worship - its extraction from the seder meal and then agape meal), but the form of this can vary, and the interpretation of it be openly variable.

This then is where the Catholic intersects with the Unitarian, though the Unitarian grew up as an aspect of Reformation individualism (that is, individual interpreters of the scriptures, and then purely conscience over any particular text or tradition).

The postliberal, however, looks for more collective centres of the drama, and perhaps an ethical centre (Liechty postliberalism here over Lindbeck Yale postliberalism - the Yale version hardly has any liberalism to be "post" about). Postliberalism is Protestant. The comparative postliberal Catholic position would involve centres of collective existence and expectation to perform in a visibly Catholic manner. In other words, it moves back away from a pure individualism towards some sort of collective Church.

The key to this, I suggest, is that expectations of performance are found in liturgy, like interpretive cars revolving around a given liturgical roundabout. The liturgy provides the spirituality, and thus the terms of the debate, and so the liberalism that functions is in relationship to that collective expression: an expression rich in symbolism and inheritance, but open in postmodern fashion to interpretations even to the point of irony.

Liturgy is not quite fixed, however, because the Church is able to make changes according to interpretation: nothing stops it, for example, from adding syncretistic content, or cultural forms from the present, or whatever is agreed.

It would also include forms of ministry: particularly the threefold kind and succession. Again, the understanding of this would be liberal but the postliberal Catholic position is in the institutional appearance.

I come at this as a liberal. My adoption of the Catholic is a reasoned view that it offers spiritual resources drawing on the Jesus ethical imprint, and a range of witnessing texts, and offers a collective provision, and a continuing trained overseeing ministry. Nevertheless, I draw from Reformed elements too, as well as the religious humanistic and elsewhere (Buddhist, neo-Pagan).

I do think it is possible to have a truly liberal community. I used to argue for it. It means different people providing resources by which there is worship, and each pastorally in the collective worship setting provides for others in the market place of ideas and symbols. There is no given basis of ministry, though oversight is practical: the overseers would train others to do ministry. It means people showing the world that they can come together with differences as a community - a gospel for a world of difference that all too easily divides. Such does not aim for a collective definition of faith, only that of drawing on difference and demonstrating a common humanity.

Now the fact is that in 2001 the Unitarians in Britain adopted a pseudo-creed in its General Assembly Object that commits them to "upholding the liberal Christian tradition" (though I do not know what that "the" is). At the time some leading people there called for its use as an invocation in worship. So it was more than just something referring to a remote body (the General Assembly) that has limited powers of persuasion over congregations.

So the Unitarians are not such a body of pure individualism, or differences, but a body where one so called tradition was given privilege for its present and future amongst whatever differences do exist. There is no such purely individualistic or pluralistic Church now. There are some small groups, close to this. There are, of course, congregations of difference, although the Object tends to encourage definition by agreement over definition by difference. So this Church now tends towards the postliberal: having a maintained position of upholding that is then acted out, performed, for its religious and spiritual product.

The question is who does the postmodern, symbolic, Catholic and Reformed postliberalism better? My own adopted background was also Anglican as well as Unitarian, and as a liberal I made the full move out - Unitarian - in 2004 and more fully in - Anglican - in 2006. The Anglican makes more of the resources and the inheritance about which one can be symbolic, and it allows the movement into the Catholic (which Unitarianism excludes, by its Puritan shadow, and in practice - such as the "no" given to the Catholics of The Liberal Rite), and Anglicanism facilitates an in-depth theological engagement with Christianity's textual resources and the particular human-divine drama rather than the broad spread engagement that Unitarianism encourages.

Eucharistic Quiz

Another of these quizzes, this time on the eucharist theology, which despite its limitations I tried to answer the given questions as accurately as possible from my point of view. There is probably not enough on transignification or consubstantiation, and some questions make assumptions.

Eucharistic theology created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Zwingli You are Ulrich Zwingli. You believe that bread and wine are symbols of the absent Jesus. You believe in interpreting Scripture reasonably. Zwingli 81% Calvin 50% Unitarian 44% Orthodox 38% Luther 31% Catholic 25%

The answer is disappointing, in that I do not see myself as being in agreement with the Zwingli position. I'm almost horrified to think I have any agreement with Calvin! Rather I think that when you say there is real presence, it is gone, and when you say there is real absence, it is present. This is a postmodern view, and I call it simulacration, but it may also be one apophatic view applied to this ritual - that is, to negate both positions when presented with them.

Being disappointed I had another go, trying to forget what I had put the first time. It is not easy, but I focused on what I really thought. The result was even worse:

Zwingli 81%
Calvin 63%
Unitarian 63%
Orthodox 31%
Luther 31%
Catholic 13%

Giles Goddard's Beacon

The correspondence that was stalled resumed between the unrelated Andrew and Giles Goddard. Giles Goddard (pictured) has produced, I think, a very powerful letter of 3 November that puts the issues of the future of Anglicanism very clearly.

There is a real possibility that a more generous Anglicanism can emerge from its continuing self destruction (if he is right), and a reason for this is a kind of self-destruction of the evangelical groups. They do tend to do this: as some of them lay the law down by their strategies, some get cold feet and others realise that the cost of following Conservative Evangelicals might be greater than the freedom of individuals. The Fulcrum position is both in the shadow of the Conservatives and trying to break free of the definitions being handed down and the actions they'd take.

The whole Lambeth 1:10 episode, and what has followed, is a disaster of manipulation and mess: the Open Evangelicals think that they can follow this disaster as a means to isolate The Episcopal Church and install some clearer doctrine. Instead they find themselves squeezed by their own making: the Covenant process is not about more doctrine anyway - it is a process. But they are squeezed between Conservative Evangelicals who are separatist or takeover in ethic, and the liberals who are inclusive in ethic. Fulcrum is buying the old idea that it can find some middle position by which to hold a much wider Church and a Communion together - but the middle does not work like this any more. Rather it is where the cut comes.

The Fulcrum position in being broader about evangelicalism is increasingly realising that, once again, the evangelical position is in a self-harming mess. As Giles Goddard says, a victor mentality has become a victim mentality.

He is right about Scotland and Wales and their movement, and that in England there are parts of a more generous approach.

Do I have any criticism of Giles Goddard's letter? Probably that we will end up with some sort of postmodern solution, that there will be splits and zones of similarity, and it may not be such a bad outcome. The point is that the change from victor mentality will remain a mentality of victim even afterwards. Confidence remains in generosity - that's the point.

Spiritual Freedom

My blog entry Logic and Mixture has drawn a number of comments due to what I wrote as follows:

Then, however, they do not usually have communion between these bishops, despite accepting that they are wholly legitimate lines of succession. The bishops do not share their altars with others [see the correction offered in the comments]. What they usually do is incardinate, that is bring the other in. The bishop shares with other bishops of the same (mini) Church, and priests are incardinated under them. To connect one Church with another is to develop a close relationship, one being the senior partner of the other.

This is why The Liberal Rite does not even share communion with the Liberal Catholic Church International, even though the LCCI was involved in consecrating those bishops who make up The Liberal Rite.

The last paragraph is factually wrong, certainly from The Liberal Rite and Independent Liberal Catholic Fellowship points of view, and it was a Canadian strand of the LCCI that was involved in The Liberal Rite consecration. Liz Stuart later moved into the British and Irish LCCI.

The explanation being given formed part of a wider explanation about the mess of the Anglican Communion, and if it is becoming a Church above Churches, and formal agreements of recognition and intercommunion made with other Churches that of course stay as other Churches.

So there is a need to clarify (and this is checked) as it is important not to misrepresent groups.

First of all, in a number of the liberal groups, and specifically the Independent Liberal Catholic Fellowship, the altar tables are free in terms of offering sacraments.

Secondly, altar tables are shared, but agreements of intercommunion are indeed problematic. It is the setting up of formal agreements that is the problem, as they suggest that without them there is no intercommunion - when there is. The idea and practice within many sections of the Independent Sacramental Movement is to free matters, not add barriers.

This was what I was trying to indicate for the other argument (if in a round-about way). Having a Communion does not involve a tendency to centralisation, as seen with Rowan Williams, which in effect transfers a Church upwards. The Independent Sacramentalist Movement has these small named Churches, situations of recognition, but they remain the masters of their own organising.

Incidentally, and as a qualifier to all of this, the Liberal Catholic Church International does not allow concelebration with other clergy, and it has introduced something of a creed. So what I wrote is correct regarding them, but not regarding others.

My own broader interest in this, I suppose, goes back to the inspiration of J. M. Lloyd Thomas, and James Martineau, with the further Catholic development of the reinvention of a Presbyterianism without the Puritanism, this development drawing from the Unitarian side that has been sidelined by the Unitarians themselves; as well as, on the Anglican side, the potential for the breadth found within the more symbolic approach of a conserving liturgical approach and, within that (and at the same time), a hopefully confident and freer theological expression.

There is also an area of debate here between the non-realist (which does not mean not realist!) and the apophatic (the via negativa), and so the relationship between spirituality and theological content. My view is about having the widest possible theological content consistent with a spirituality that works - one that includes the ethical Jesus, and a creative working of a freedom in a symbolic gift exchange between the spiritual and the material in people as individuals and as a collective.

Papal Luther

Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittburgh has responded to the letter from Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori of The Episcopal Church.

1st November, A.D. 2007
The Feast of All Saints

The Most Revd Katharine Jefferts Schori
Episcopal Church Center
New York, New York

Dear Katharine,

Here I stand. I can do no other. I will neither compromise the Faith once delivered to the saints, nor will I abandon the sheep who elected me to protect them.

Pax et bonum in Christ Jesus our Lord,

+Bob Pittsburgh

This calls for a cartoon...

Reality and Abstraction

The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church (in the United States), Katharine Jefferts Schori, has written to the Bishop to Pittsburgh, Robert Duncan, and will to others planning and acting similarly to take their dioceses outside The Episcopal Church. There is a report about the letter here. She writes:

I call upon you to recede from this direction and to lead your diocese on a new course that recognizes the interdependent and hierarchical relationship between the national Church and its dioceses and parishes. That relationship is at the heart of our mission, as expressed in our polity.
...

If your course does not change, I shall regrettably be compelled to see that appropriate canonical steps are promptly taken to consider whether you have abandoned the Communion of this Church...

These remarks can be contrasted with those recently of the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated 14 October, writing specifically to Bishop Howe of Florida, and clarified on 22 October to the world, that regarded the dicocese as significant - and a Windsor compliant one staying in communion with Canterbury, whatever the status of the "abstraction" of the National Church, but clarifying that the national Church is important for "administrative reasons" and to deliver a "unity of canon law".

Well here we have the reality of the national Church as it delivers its unity of canon law contrasted with the relative abstraction of the Anglican Communion.

There are comments on this on Thinking Anglicans.

Then, and also relevant, is the meeting the new Archbishop of Canada, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, with the Archbishop of Canterbury on October 25 2007, in which Fred Hiltz explained the diocese of Ottawa's decision to approve blessings of same-sex unions.

The Archbishop's reply was that the Canadian approach has been "coherent", according to Fred Hiltz, and, he adds (as stated here):

"It's always nice to hear someone like the Archbishop of Canterbury or from the Anglican Communion Office say you're handling this coherently, cautiously, judiciously, and you've got some things I would hold up as a model for others to consider as they grapple with the issue," said Archbishop Hiltz.

This clearly shows that the Covenant, should it ever happen, is intended to be based on Communion-process (baptism, [arch]bishops and Communion) and not fellowship-belief (fixed doctrine around which people gather), in other words this is Catholic understanding (based on a centralised Communion) rather than a Protestant or Reformed understanding. Some of the Conservative and even Open evangelicals do not yet seem to have got the point, and it is one reason why this Covenant process will end up not satisfying Conservative and some Open Evangelicals, as well as Liberals, and why (hopefully) it will fail.

There are comments also about this on Thinking Anglicans.

November 2nd sees additional interesting comment from T. W. Bartel writing under the Modern Churchpeople's Union (extracts follow, and emphases are added by me):

the notion that any Windsor-compliant diocese in The Episcopal Church (TEC) is a member in good standing of the Anglican Communion, even if its province is excommunicated, is anything but an innocuous restatement of traditional teaching on priest–bishop relations.

The Windsor Report, the communiqué of the first Primates' Meeting after Windsor (Dromantine), the Joint Standing Committee, the Covenant Design Group itself, and key Lambeth officials closely connected to the Group, all affirmed that the process of adopting a Covenant would need to be an unhurried, worldwide, comprehensive and truly consultative exercise, with none of the content of the Covenant fixed at an early stage. The final report of the Covenant Design Group, however, urged the Communion to commit itself immediately to the ‘fundamental shape' of the Draft Covenant, with consultation in the provinces limited to ‘fine tuning'. And the fundamental shape of that Covenant demands the surrender of provincial authority to the ‘Instruments of Unity', who are given the full and exclusive authority to rule that a member church is not fulfilling ‘the substance of the Covenant' and therefore requires ‘a process of restoration and renewal' to re-establish its covenant relationship with fellow-churches.

The Dar es Salaam communiqué went even further, exacerbating the trend of the Primates to credit themselves, in the absence of any worldwide Anglican Covenant, with powers over the provinces that have no sound basis in Anglican tradition, canon law or any other source.

In the midst of these circumstances, the trustworthiness of the ‘Instruments of Unity' is scarcely enhanced when the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a personal letter to another bishop, takes it as read that the Instruments, in addition to having the power to deprive a member church of full status in the Communion, have the authority to recognise dissident dioceses of that church as retaining that status—so long as their bishop conforms to the strictures of documents and processes with no legitimate binding force on the Communion. And, pace Lambeth Palace, that is both a new policy statement—albeit a natural extension of current policy— and a road map for the future of the Communion...

Quite so: the limited institutions of this Communion have been grabbing power and recent comments have all the characteristics of a new policy statement and a road map for the future.